To the left of the road leading to the village of Amfia (Gardiki) in the Municipality of Thouria there has being standing, since the 14th century, the Holy Monastery of Gardiki with its spectacular byzantine temple, renowned for its dome, one of the most delicate and beautiful specimens of post-byzantine dome construction.

The monastery of Gardiki was used as strategic head quarter and base of operations by Archimandrites Gregorios Dikaios Papaflessas during the Greek Revolution of 1821, according to the historical memoirs of a Messenian fighter, while it operated as a monastery for men.

Among the Fathers that stayed in the monastery during the years 1920-1929 was the renowned Greek missionary into Africa, Archimandrites Chrysostomos Papasarantopoulos from Vasilitsi, Messenia.

The rebuilt monastic cells and the tower were, from 1958 to 1977, the home of a benevolent Foundation, an Asylum for the Terminally Ill of the Holy Metropolis of Messenia which, under the constant care and support of its founder, the late Chrysostomos Daskalakis, Metropolitan of Messenia (1945-1961), tended hundreds of poor terminal patients. After the relocation of this foundation in new, larger and more spacious buildings in the year 1977, under the late Chrysostomos Themelis, Metropolitan of Messenia (1965-2007), the monastery became a monastery for women, by a Periodical Act of 1980, and operated with two monastics that lived in it for a few years.

Today it belongs to the discontinued monasteries of the Holy Metropolis of Messenia.